Joseph in the pit sermon

Sengbe Pieh (also known as Joseph Cinque) was born in Mani in present-day Sierra Leone in /  He was a rice farmer and trader, and at the time of his capture he had a wife and three children.

In slave traders kidnapped Pieh while he was working in the rice fields. He was taken to Lomboko off of the Gallinas Coast.

He, with countless others, were sent to Havana, Cuba to be sold into slavery. Pieh and 52 men, women, and children were purchased by  two Spanish plantation owners and boarded onto the schooner La Amistad.

Three days into the voyage to Porto Principe, Cuba, Pieh freed himself and others from their shackles. They killed the captain, cook, and two other crew members disappeared.

Having taken over the ship, Pieh ordered the schooner sail towards Africa.

Cinque joseph biography genesis 5 Joseph Cinqué was an enslaved African who led a revolt on the Amistad coastal slave ship in He was later taken into custody in the United States but was freed by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The revolt came to be known as the Amistad mutiny. Cinqué is believed to have been born.

Rather than comply, the second-mate - who was steering the ship - secretly changed course at night, sailing west or north. After two months at sea the Amistad was seized by the U.S. brig Washington off the coast of Long Island, NY. Sengbe Pieh and the surviving African captives were arrested and charged with murder and piracy.

Pieh and the others told their story through a translator; providing accounts of their capture, sale into slavery, and their attempts to free themselves aboard the Amistad.

The courts - first the District Court, then the Circuit Court, and finally the Supreme Court - ruled in their favor. They ruled that Pieh and the others had been illegally captured, and thus illegally sold into slavery.

In November Sengbe Pieh returned to Mendeland in present-day Sierra Leone with the other African captives.

They were accompanied by missionaries charged with helping them readjust to life in Africa.

Cinque joseph biography genesis Sengbe Pieh (c. – c. ), [1] also known as Joseph Cinqué or Cinquez [2] and sometimes referred to mononymously as Cinqué, was a West African man of the Mende people [citation needed] who led a revolt of many Africans on the Spanish slave ship La Amistad in July

It is not believed that Pieh ever found his family, as reports say that they perished during an ongoing war. Little is known of what became of Sengbe Pieh after his return to Sierra Leone.

Sengbe Pieh is just one of many associated with the Amistad event. To learn more about others involved, please access the main People page of this itinerary.

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